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Carolina Cloud pays SOFR on unused prepaid credits

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Why This Matters

Carolina Cloud's new interest feature on prepaid credits introduces a novel way for organizations to earn interest on their unused compute and storage credits, aligning with financial market standards like SOFR. This development enhances the value proposition of prepaid credits, incentivizing users to hold onto unused balances and potentially reducing waste, while also reflecting a trend toward integrating financial concepts into cloud services for added transparency and benefits.

Key Takeaways

Your organization’s prepaid credits earn interest. We pay a SOFR-referenced rate, compounded daily, on the real-money balance an admin has purchased — the same way a bank pays interest on a deposit. Idle prepaid credit isn’t dead money: it grows until you spend it.

Interest is paid only on prepaid credits — the balance you bought (see Prepaid Credits). Free trial/promo credits never earn interest, which is one of the reasons the two buckets are tracked separately.

A credit, not cash This interest is paid in Carolina Cloud credits, added to your prepaid balance to spend on compute and storage. It is not cash interest, not a cash deposit, and not redeemable for cash. Carolina Cloud is not a bank, and your prepaid balance is not a bank deposit or money-market account — “like a bank” describes the math, not a banking relationship.

The rate tracks SOFR (the Secured Overnight Financing Rate), the benchmark overnight interest rate published every business day by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. By default we pay the full SOFR rate — no spread skimmed off — which typically beats what a bank pays on a comparable deposit, since banks usually pay SOFR minus a margin.

The interest you earn is itself added to your prepaid balance, so it’s fully spendable on compute and storage like any other prepaid credit.

The applied rate is never negative. If the reference rate ever went below zero, your interest simply stops at 0 — your balance is never reduced by interest.

We follow the standard bank/market convention so the numbers are auditable and reproducible:

Daily accrual on an ACT/360 day-count. Each day’s interest is balance × (annual rate ÷ 100) × (1 ÷ 360) . SOFR is quoted on a 360-day year, so we use 360.

Each day’s interest is . SOFR is quoted on a 360-day year, so we use 360. Daily compounding. Interest is capitalized into your prepaid balance every day, so the next day’s interest is calculated on the slightly larger balance. Over a year this makes the effective annual yield (APY) a touch higher than the headline rate.

Interest is capitalized into your prepaid balance every day, so the next day’s interest is calculated on the slightly larger balance. Over a year this makes the a touch higher than the headline rate. Weekends and holidays are covered. SOFR only publishes on business days, so each non-business day accrues using the most recently published rate. Friday’s rate carries through Saturday and Sunday automatically — you earn interest every calendar day.

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